52 said, and he went on to explain that during the nineteen-forties many ideal- ists had not identified with the Social- ist Party in France, because it had not been as vigorous as it could have been in opposing Vichy and postwar colonialism. Berthet had thought that the Socialists, like the conser- vatives, were opposed to any funda- mental changes, so he saw no outlet for his politica] beliefs except Commu- nIsm. The young Riboud felt that his political choices were similarly re- stricted. He emerged from the war with fervent convictions about the dangers of nationalism, about the im- portance of a united Europe and a world government, and about one's ob- ligation to oppose privilege-wheth- er of a so-called master race or of the French ruling class. He was a prisoner at Buchenwald for twenty months during the war, and he had seen his Nazi guards as products of a contagious xenophobia and racism, while from both the Communists and the Christians in the camp he had learned the value of faith in something beyond oneself or one's country. For Riboud, the Communists he met at Buchenwald had been "like a fountain of hope." However one might define Riboud's politics, he has always thought of him- self as "a man of the left," although not necessarily as a Marxist. He has long nourished a dislike for what he thinks of as the French establishment. Not surprisingly, in 1968, when stu- dent protests against the conservatism of French society and the government of President Charles de Gaulle spilled onto the streets of several cities, Ri- boud sided with the students. He was in New York and Krishna Riboud was visiting India when Claude Baks, a fam- ily friend, who was then a close aide at Schlumberger, phoned him to report that Christophe, who was eighteen, had joined the Paris demonstrations. "People said it was a revolution," Riboud recalled not long ago. "My feeling about French society was that it was so set that you had to push hard just to move a few inches." Son and fa- ther both pushed.. Jean Riboud's protest involved his frIend Henri Langlois, the founder of the Cinémathèque Française-an internationa] film li- brary that by 1968 contained some fifty thousand films. Riboud had known Langlois since the summer of 1958, when Krishna, who had met Langlois at Cannes, introduced them. That summer, Langlois was editing a film DEAD NECK, EASTERN POINT, BASS ROCKS I At Dead Neck, the empty real, gull- and sun-inhabited, scrubs the salt-whitened swimmer's century and nation from him-a gull-winged flare of magnesium caws whitely. As soon as I was bearded, above, below, baroque with hair, I drenched myself in emptiness, vacancy, as joy. Here, and at the stone arcade of that rich man's house, I emptily watch antics of white pediments, foam-footed, as they heel, difficult toys, in silvered fleets, between shoal and shore- models of my advice: come pour your smallness in this space. This immense sand box of the inutile, wan landscape, scoured, spindling in a various multitude of views-behind me, a modest tumble of rock- scumble palely meanders north; beige petit-point points spittily toward the capstoned folds of seaside Gloucester, hilled and steepled: at the sea, God is a point of wintery exclamation, a sharp surprise. I cannot think; I breathe too much. This difficult air splashes woodenly at my lips. II The gold air rings with clamor. A block of roofs at one corner of the gold air stonily stands. Wind moves on green baize, transparent croupier. The light boats sail wind-stiffened, white sculptures by the water-enchanted race. III I sheathe my chest in Boyar outfits, in a savage's view of love across Cape Ann. I speak as if I were not here where the widowed rocks bear white flounces of storming apple branches bursting at them, ornamenting their black dresses The wet booms which are lament and requiem, the white masts which are a lover's sperm of Egyptian obelisks, combed and splintering, lotus columns forked and shattered in floods: I believe the spray is winnowed of its salt by the flailing air shrieking with gulls, in the labor of the fellahin. The air takes on the weight of rock from the ocean's unvolcanic chill; lumped wind tumbles on you-these brute winds breed no farmland, only emptiness, a public joy, an anarchy of motions. - HAROLD BRODKEY . . on the lIfe of Chagall, and a friend brought him and his longtime com- panion, Mary Meerson, to lunch at La Carelle. The couple stayed on for a month. Riboud was fascinated by Langlois, a corpulent man who de- voured great quantities of food and wine and had a huge enthusiasm for movies, and he became an ardent back- er of Langlois's library. Unlike Riboud, Langlois was some- w hat disorganized. Riboud tried to help him devise systems for catalogu- ing films and for establishing financial records and a salary schedule for em- ployees, but these efforts were less than successful. Films were lost; the book- keeping procedures became a tangled mess. Andre Malraux, President de Gaulle's Minister of Culture, became so alarmed by Langlois's slovenly habits that in February of 1968 he dismissed him as director. Langlois had mismanaged the film library and